National Motorcycle Museum Open Day

[Millietant]

I didn't take the FJ for a ride to the Museum for the Open Day last Sunday but thought I'd post the  as it was an "interesting" day 

The morning dawned damp but bright and I rode the FZ1 to a local supermarket car-park to meet my 3 companions for the ride and visit.

As I arrived, and noticed I was (unusually) the first one there, so I checked my phone to find that Mike (Triumph Soeed Twin 1200) had a puncture and Emma (Suzuki SV 650) would be a bit late as she had had trouble starting her bike - it normally starts at the first touch of the button. Simon (Triumph 1200 Scrambler) was his normal "fashionably late" self.

Luckily, Mike had repair kit handy so fixed his puncture (nail in the tyre as per the photo) and around 20 minutes later, we departed for the scenic route to the NMM.

All was going well, Mike pulled in street 6 miles to check his rear tire pressure and Ends also mentioned  that her bike wasn't running right. Then about 15 miles in, Emma pulled into a construction site entrance and jumped off her bike port quickly. We all pulled over as well and when asked, she told us that the bike had been misfiring, then the instruments had gone haywire and the bike had cut out, but there was also  :sarcastic:a strong smell of burning coming from under the seat tank area.  As she described the burning smell to be like hot plastic, we thought immediately that it would be a bad connector block, so started strong the bike down to check them. At this point Emma realised the value of checking your toolkit to make sure that you put all the pieces back in the pouch the last time you used it - when she would have noticed that the handle for the cross head screwdriver was missing. Thankfully, this happened while she wasn't riding alone!!

First thing was to disconnect the battery........... and that's when we noticed that the battery was too hot to touch !!!!

Levering it out, we noticed that the side of the battery had bulged substantially at each cell and this AGM battery was getting hotter still, even though it was disconnected from the bike. I've had a similar experience in the past where a friends AGM battery had behaved the same when it failed and there was nothing wrong with his charging system, so given that the battery was overall 10 years old and we didn't have a multimeter anyway, we went online to search for a new battery......at 10am on a Sunday morning. Luckily there was a Halfords (National auto parts, bike accessory and cycling chain of stores) only 4 miles away that was open and had the correct battery in stock.

As I had s top box, I got the job sf taking Ends to get the battery, which because the store was surprisingly busy, took around 45 minutes. When we got back to the bike, Simon mentioned that the old battery, which has been sue at the side of the road, was still too hot to hold !!!

Long story short - with the new battery fitted the bike started instantly, ran great and we made the rest of the journey to the museum without incident.

The NMM celebrates the history of British Motorcycles and also had guest presentations (including one which had Allen Millyard involved) and was absolutely packed, but we had a fantastic few hours investigating and meeting, unexpectedly, a surprising number of old friends.

The journey home was completely uneventful, save that the sun shone and the roads were dry, twisty and almost traffic free. What a way to end the day.

As a post-script, checking the SV out shouted that the charging rate is normal, so Ends will just keep riding it and watch for any signs of trouble diligently.

[Urx]

Just proves the value of riding with friends 
I had an rd400 do something similar on its first ride after Id bought it.
Took it for a gentle shake down run to a friends house ...on arrival i was streaming smoke from under the tailpiece like a damaged plane ......
Turned out the smoke was boiling battery electrolyte !!!!!!
The previous owner had fitted an RdLC body kit very neatly but had the electrical nous of a stone...rectifier present and correct but no regulator.... at all

[Millietant]

I must apologise for typing my post out on my iPhone and not properly checking through it after the IOS had "corrected my typing.

Just read my post and am disgusted at the wrong substitutions - and I must stop using "swipe-text", which seems to be the root cause of most of the ambiguities that kick in the autocorrections/autosubstitutions.